ERNIE 'JUNIOR' ALLO

Rodeo dad
Father of two wears many hats, cowboy and baseball coach among them

Words by LISA ROSE/Photo by MAHALA GAYLORD

Last Saturday, Ernie "Junior" Allo slept in, sort of. The Monroe Township father of two got home near dawn from his late-shift construction job in Brooklyn. He fed his horse and hit the sheets, stealing a couple of hours' rest before his younger son's 9 a.m. T-ball game, which he helped coach.

Before lunch, Allo washed his horse, Batman, put him in the trailer and packed up for a road trip with his wife and two sons to see the Trenton Thunder play at Waterfront Park.

He and his son's team were invited to stand on the field during the national anthem. After the game, the family headed east to a different arena, the Cowtown Rodeo in Pilesgrove.

Steer wrestling at Cowtown Rodeo in Pilesgrove

Allo swapped his coaching gear for a flannel shirt, cinch jeans and a western hat, awaiting his turn to compete. It was after 10 p.m. when he rode Batman into the dirt, chasing a steer. He leapt from the horse and grabbed the bovine's horns, twisting it to the ground in eight seconds.

Cowboy and coach, Allo wears different hats as mentor to his sons. The Brooklyn native is a bundle of city-country contradictions, speaking more like Tony Manero than John Wayne, sporting a pencil mustache and a giant tattoo to go with his frontier fashions.

"I have two worlds, baseball and rodeo," says Allo, 42, a teamster who works for the Staten Island-based contractors, Di Fazio & Sons. "Taking my boys with my horse and trailer and shooting from baseball to Cowtown, it's hectic, but I love it."

Allo first began tackling animals in 1983 at tournaments with his uncle, also named Ernie. The two of them met legendary steer wrestler Skip Akers at a Staten Island arena, and he helped show Allo the ropes. Uncle and nephew also would travel to farms near Englishtown and Jackson to train.

"I was a teenager at that time and I was into AC/DC," says Allo. "I had my leather jacket on, long hair and everybody was looking at me like I was crazy."

While Allo showed promise in baseball at school, he ultimately chose boots over cleats. He got hooked on the adrenaline rush of pitting man against beast.
"You're riding a horse that's going 20 miles an hour, which doesn't sound like much, but it's extremely fast," says Allo. "The next thing you know, you have horns in your arms."

Allo did some soul-searching when he became a parent, questioning whether he should continue participating in such a dangerous sport. He's been gored in the groin twice and has suffered knee and shoulder injuries.

"My mother-in-law had a talk with me, and I actually stopped for three weeks," Allo explains. "Those three weeks were miserable. I finally said, 'This is what I want to do,' and I never looked back. If something happens, it happens. I'm doing what I love and, my boys, they love it too."

His wife, Charlene, says she supports her husband because she trusts his talent. "He's very good at what he does so I don't worry in terms of him getting hurt. My mother, however, is terrified on a daily basis."

They have mixed feelings about their elder son, Garrett, 7, following in his father's rodeo footsteps."It's a rough, rough sport," says Allo. "I can teach him the right way, but he's still going to get banged up."

Allo won't stop Garrett if the youngster demonstrates he takes steer wrestling seriously. He can get started when he hits 14. "He has to love it from his heart," says Allo. "There's a lot of guys that do it to wear the cowboy outfit and impress the girls. Normally those guys get hurt pretty bad."

Allo and Garrett had a father-son victory two years ago at an event in Florida. They were on vacation in Orlando and made a side trip to a local rodeo. "I did the steer wrestling and Garrett got into sheep riding," Allo says. "He won first and I won third. They gave him a shirt, and he was so proud of that. It was one of the best moments."

Garrett is named for the movie "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid." The first-grader recently impressed his class during show and tell. "We were learning about horses at school," Garrett says. "We were learning stuff like what you call baby horses, and I brought in a horse tooth."

His sibling, Brett, 5, seems to be more interested in baseball than rodeo. "I like baseball. Me and my dad practice baseball, but I like the horse too."
Allo's prize collection includes three saddles and 20 buckles from local and national events. On his back is a tattoo depicting him in action at the Staten Island Rodeo (now closed).

Tough but tender
Fellow wrestler Butch Dase describes Allo as a man with an imposing exterior but a soft heart. "He's a tough guy, but being tough isn't being mean," says Dase. "Tough is knowing you're going to get hurt and still doing it. When it comes to animals and kids, you see a different side of him."

Allo considers the Garden State the perfect place because he's a (relatively) short dash from the city while living in an area with open acres to practice riding Batman with his sons. Charlene, who gets in the saddle herself on occasion, is also a New Yorker-turned-Jerseyan. She says when old friends head south to visit Cowtown, they're often flummoxed by rustic scene.

"My family is city people," explains Charlene, 37, a special events coordinator for the American Parkinson Disease Association. "They come to the rodeo in nice shoes, and I'm like, 'You're going to get them filthy.' "

The couple's first date was dinner at an all-night Chinese restaurant in lower Manhattan. Allo proposed on a Caribbean cruise. They got married in Brooklyn at the Riviera, a catering hall that boasts a laser-light show.

Charlene says, "A lot of people from the rodeo were at our wedding, and it was culture shock for them. They thought the cocktail hour was the main course."

Allo doesn't have a huge budget for equines, which can cost more than $50,000, he says. He rode a horse named Hitman before buying a promising racer, Sid, from a friend. When the animal died suddenly of a blood clot, the family mourned the loss as if a relative had passed away.

Activists have long declared that broncos and bulls are mistreated during events. Arenas like Cowtown are monitored by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association for safe handling of the animals. Still, some graphic images have surfaced on animal rights websites.

Allo argues there's a disconnect as protestors fail to recognize that cowboys take pride in their stock and are closer to animals on a daily basis than the people who denounce rodeos. He looks after rescue dogs and cats while his sons tend to a pair of frogs named Hoppy and Tiny.

"My animals are like my children," says Allo. "If you want to talk about cruelty, what about people who have pets? It's a sin the way the animals are treated."

While many cowboys tour full time, Allo has gone the weekend warrior route. He did test his mettle wrangling on the road when he started out. "It was a little too much," he says. "You live in the trailer and you're traveling 20 to 30 hours at a clip. We jammed 15 guys into the back of a pickup truck with a camper because the more guys that went, the cheaper it was. It was definitely not traveling like a rock star."

Steer wrestling is his specialty because at 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, he's too big to ride rough stock. He began calling himself "Junior" so as not to be confused with his uncle Ernie. The nickname is a tribute to the Steve McQueen western "Junior Bonner," directed by Sam Peckinpah.

A wrestling session starts with two cowboys racing out on horses behind the steer. One of them is the "hazer," riding along solely to make sure the target animal runs a straight path so the other can jump off and grasp the horns. Allo and Dase haze for each other.

"There's a lot of trust between us," says Dase, a horse dentist by day. "You have to have all the trust in the world because if you mis-haze a steer, it runs off and that's it, you're done. We're competing against each other yet we're helping each other."
Although Allo has never made the National Finals Rodeo, the cowboy version of the Super Bowl, he is a regional champ who's trekked to Idaho five times for an annual circuit showdown.

Jersey pride
"The crowds out there are surprised at the talent that we have back here in New Jersey," Allo says. "When I'm announced from Jersey, everyone's looking at me like, 'What is this guy gonna do? He's gonna fall off the horse.' You go out there and you beat them and they respect you."

The Cowtown season runs May through September so there are no beach weekends for the Allos. When the weather gets warm, it's dust and mud rather than sand and surf. "I've never been to the Shore in the summertime," says Allo. "My trips are to Pennsylvania and upstate New York. When they had the rodeo in Wildwood, that was my summer thing."

After more than two decades throwing steers, summer '09 may be the sunset of Allo's cowboy career. "I don't want to miss out on any activities with my sons," he says. "When you're 20 years old, you bounce back in one day. Now it takes me a week to bounce back."

One of Allo's favorite moments wasn't at a contest but at a concert. Charlene won tickets to a special club show with Garth Brooks in 1997 and during a Q&A, she asked the singer about his tune, "Rodeo," which describes a cowboy who loves the sport more than his woman. Charlene explained to Brooks that her husband was a steer wrestler.

"He was shocked that there was a cowboy from the Northeast," says Charlene. "He decided to meet Ernie because he always dreamed of being a cowboy but never could handle the cowboy life. He found Ernie in the crowd and shook his hand and said, 'It's a great honor to meet you.' "